Sergio Larraín's photography inhabits Barcelona these months as a silent presence. More than a simple review of his work, the exhibition Sergio Larraín. The Wanderer of Valparaíso (Foto Colectania) proposes a journey through the trajectory of a man who began seeking to see the world through the viewfinder and ended up finding himself in the void.
The rooms of Foto Colectania house a good number of people visiting the exhibition, so it's best to move in the opposite direction to avoid getting in each other's way, and start with the children. Those beings on the threshold, fragile and fierce at the same time. Whom we imagine protected by the adult world and who, nevertheless, in the photographs of Valparaíso appear dressed as men. They smoke. They look at the camera with a mixture of defiance and premature weariness, and seem to know something they shouldn't yet.
In this first series, Sergio Larraín's images feature children who pose with an almost theatrical toughness. Street children who have learned too soon to hold the gaze of adults, in contrast to the absolute vulnerability of when they sleep, huddled against each other, with open mouths and the soft features of childhood. These are photographs that move, but do not denounce or dramatize, they only observe. And in that observation appears a strange form of tenderness.
Larraín's camera seems to get very close, but at the same time maintains an essential distance. There is something in his way of looking that avoids intrusion. As if he understood that photographing is also a form of disturbance. Looking through the lens is an act of love that, paradoxically, establishes an insurmountable distance.
That distance turns the photographer into an almost invisible presence. A marginal note to the scene. He is neither the protagonist nor the judge of what happens in front of him. Rather, he seems a timid, familiar witness, someone who is there without inconveniencing. That discretion is also perceived in the photographs of prostitute bars or in the corners where the dispossessed gather. He is there without disturbing, inhabiting the intimacy of others with the respect of an unexpected guest.
If Larraín's soul has a geography, that is Valparaíso. The Chilean port appears in his photographs as a living organism. Stairs that go up and down the hills, narrow alleys, balconies overlooking the Pacific abyss, and a dizzying verticality. It was more than just a setting. Agnès Sire, curator of the exhibition, points out that the city was the place of his freedom.
For years, he walked its hills like a vagabond. In fact, he was known as the "vagabond of Valparaíso", but not out of destitution, but out of existential choice. To walk without destination, to observe without haste, to let the city reveal its secrets. In his captures, he not only contains the scene; he embraces it. A child running, a couple kissing, a man waiting on a corner. The city breathes within the images.
And in that breathing, something deeper appears. Larraín does not observe poverty from above, but somehow recognizes himself in it. In abandoned children and wanderers, the photographer finds an echo of his own maladjustment, a resonance between his solitude and the solitude of the world.
"Rectangle in hand, I seek geometry." With this maxim, he defined his craft. For him, the camera was an instrument of order against the centrifugal chaos of reality. In his 1963 book, thus titled, El rectángulo en la mano (The Rectangle in Hand), the photographer reflects on this idea with an almost philosophical clarity. Photography, he says, is not just about capturing a moment. It is an exercise in attention. A way of organizing reality through lines, shadows, and spaces.
His compositions are pure emotional architecture. Stairs, doors, corners, and windows become natural frames that contain the scene. The photographer does not wait for the instant, he constructs it. He seeks in the environment a structure that allows the image to breathe.
Sometimes he lowers the camera to the ground, adopting the perspective of a dog or a child. Other times, he elevates the point of view until reality becomes abstraction. But the result always produces a strange sensation of balance. Even when the image is full of elements, there is no overwhelm. Visual weights are distributed with an almost intuitive precision. Masses of shadow and light compensate each other.
And chiaroscuro is not a simple aesthetic resource. It is a way of directing the gaze towards the subject, of momentarily isolating it from the noise of the world. In the midst of urban chaos, the human figure acquires an almost sculptural presence. And these photographs tell stories (or suggest them). Love, solitude, survival… In that sense, Larraín is more like a writer than a photographer. A writer of light.
But his career was a meteoric ascent that ended in a voluntary resignation. Sponsored by Henri Cartier-Bresson, he joined the Magnum agency. He traveled through London, Paris, and Italy, capturing the pulse of the 20th century. It was the moment of greatest recognition. But also the beginning of his discomfort. The urgency of photojournalism clashed head-on with his thirst for contemplation. "I cannot continue to adapt… I would like to find a path that allows me to act at a level that is more vital for me," he confessed in a letter to Cartier-Bresson.
So at the zenith of his career, he left Magnum and progressively withdrew from public life. "Photography is a concentration of consciousness," he said. The perfect image, he explained, is "a kind of miracle that appears in a flash of light." An instant in which everything aligns and the photographer presses the button almost by chance. Influenced by Zen thought, he began to understand art as an approach to satori (sudden personal enlightenment).
His withdrawal was also a gesture of detachment. In an almost ritual act, he even burned part of his negatives. He renounced the fame and recognition that the world of photography offered him. And paradoxically, that renunciation reinforced his myth. Today he is remembered as one of Magnum's most singular members: the photographer who achieved international success only to abandon it in search of silence.
The current exhibition —at the Foto Colectania Foundation until May 24—, as well as the retrospective that the Biennal Xavier Miserachs will offer starting this summer in Palafrugell, show not only his photographs, but also unpublished materials, such as a 16 mm film about street children, vintage copies of his press works, and the so-called "satori," drawings and writings from his period of spiritual isolation.
The tour allows a clear view of the evolution of his gaze. First, there is the photographer who explores the external world: the streets of Valparaíso, the neighborhoods of London, the Italian towns. Then appears the man who begins to question the meaning of that search. Finally emerges the contemplative who directs his gaze inward. In a way, the exhibition narrates the story of a disappearance.
Larraín expressed in life his desire to stay away from media exposure. He wanted his figure not to become a spectacle. However, his photographs also belong to the history of the 20th-century gaze. So, do we have the right to look at the work of someone who asked for silence?
Perhaps the answer lies in our way of observing. If we contemplate them in a hurry, as simple documents or icons of photojournalism, we betray their spirit. But if we look at them with the same silent attention that seems to have guided their creation, then something happens. In many of them, a strange, almost narrative sensation appears.
"Photography is a concentration of consciousness"A child smokes and sleeps on the street. A man waits seated on a chair for a couple to dance with. A shadow crosses a staircase. It is as if the photographer were looking for someone. And in that search, suddenly, he found us.
And perhaps, also, he found himself.